This relates generally to imaging devices, and more particularly, to imaging devices with broadband image pixels and infrared image pixels.
Image sensors are commonly used in electronic devices such as cellular telephones, cameras, and computers to capture images. In a typical arrangement, an electronic device is provided with an array of image pixels arranged in pixel rows and pixel columns. Circuitry is commonly coupled to each pixel column for reading out image signals from the image pixels.
Conventional imaging systems employ a single image sensor in which the visible light spectrum is sampled by red, green, and blue (RGB) image pixels arranged in a Bayer mosaic pattern. The Bayer Mosaic pattern consists of a repeating cell of two-by-two image pixels, with two green pixels diagonally opposite one another, and the other corners being red and blue. However, the Bayer pattern does not readily enable further miniaturization of image sensors via smaller image pixel sizes because of limitations of signal to noise ratio (SNR) in the image signals captured from the image pixels.
In some cases, imaging systems may be provided with infrared imaging capabilities for generating infrared images of a scene. In conventional imaging systems with infrared imaging capabilities, one of the green image pixels in the Bayer Mosaic pattern is replaced with an infrared image pixel. However, forming a Bayer Mosaic pattern having an infrared image sensitive pixel can limit the resolving power and reduce the luminance response and SNR of the image sensor when capturing visible light images.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to provide imaging devices with improved means of capturing and processing image signals.